This week we keeping learnd the facial expression animation, expecialy the mouth shape animate. First, I learn the how to animate :
Step 1 :Jaw Opening
Step 2 : Phonemes
Step 3 : Polish
Jaw opening is find the accent of this sentence you want to animate, and not to leave transition linear which is usually open mouth. and the mouth animate is before 2 frams of audio.
Animate the sounds, not the words: is like when people speak the mouth show the shape and always connected so the shape will connect. when character say “O ” sound, the shape should not be a really circle but a ” round shape with liner line angle.
Workshop: firdays workshop is quite challenging and it aims to show the overlap animate, following action animate and like cloth, hair, creature tails, even wings. But, in my opinion is quite interesting to learn the new skills
I record reference by my self，including lots of idea like gesture or disney face something, but is hard to perform well because I need to show the real emotion and decide which I could animate.
When I aniamte Yulong’s body, I felt like: why his hands is really short!!! ohMG. And also, the audio can not be export into Maya i don’t know why.
After I do lot of reading and reasearch the subtext ,I realised that it is hard to find the definition in words, but all the technique, and the subtext need the emotionla felling in realistic rather than on the paper words. even I found lots of facial animation research reference, like:
Bancroft, T. (2006) Creating Characters with Personality: For Film, TV, Animation, Video Games, and Graphic Novels. New York: Watson-Guptill.
Şekeroğlu, G. K. (2012) ‘Aesthetics and design in three dimensional animation process’, Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences, 51, pp. 123–127.
Osipa, J. (2007) Stop Staring: Facial Modeling and Animation Done Right. 3rd edn. Indianapolis: Wiley.
those are classic 3d facial expression animation books and tutourial.
However, I decide to change an angle about the character style and Cyberpunk style character is really close the Arane from my perspective, also they have facial expressions too, in other words, Cyberpunk style including special Character style design, like Mashine, silver surface, materials for steel and neon lights, etc. Maybe, they can all sum up as Futire mechanical style.
So, when I doing the reaserch, I listing a lirerature review draft be like:
Research aim and question:
This research asks: does mechanical aesthetics make people feel more connected to an animation? Or does it make the animation less meaningful？This study looks at whether mechanical aesthetics enhance or weaken the emotional meaning of animation. It also talks about the future of mechanical aesthetics ( its fiction and its value)
This eaasy explores how mechanical aesthetics in animation connects with ethics and social interaction. It also thinks about the problem of modern aesthetic relativism.
This research looks at how mechanical art challenges the very idea of beauty. It also asks how 3D animation changes our ideas about athentics in our century.
Does It also examines how the roles of animation artists, audiences, and critics are changing in this age of too much information?
This week we leand “Subtext”, which means character said words some time is not the true meaning But what do they really mean?，That is in the character’s performance. Performing is the real reacting.
We practice on ting’s class, and truly understand about it.
Subtext is the message or communication ‘beneath’ the words the actor is speaking. It’s implicit, not explicit.
transforming the meaning into a character with a rich inner life through body language
if we want to create a good subtext animation scens we must follow the tips that:
Such like: In some animation, A character says: I am FIne. But actually she/he isn’t really fine, even worse. For us the most important things is to understand true meaning’s performence way and know how the skills show and reflect in animation. Just keep going~ it still have long way to go
During last week and this week, I am very excited to fix them because i recieve lots of feedback, and I welling to fix them make the aniamte better and better. I must say I very much appreciate for Ting’s patience feedback one by one. my animate fixing list like
016 elbow pop
065 shoulder don’t sink too much( IN my understand that shoulder should more upper cuase is move foward the body side
I notice the shoulder is really details and need to foucus on at the polishing process.
115 the body rotates back to the position is currently hitting a stop . should give it overshoot or be slower in
when finishing the action, do not just moving the head, the body should keep follow move.
MOST HARD PART for me is giving it 3 frames more. It is currently turning too fast. Watch out your spacing as well.
Most hard fixing part for metoo straight
Actually those fix some times will cause problems in Maya, like when I adjust the timing ,I need move the time frame , such as from 116 to the end, totally move to +10 frame, sometime the angle will all change. The no over rotate part will be pop up to rotate too much or looks like broken. So I need adjust one by one to fix them again and agian. quite tricky way!
This week I find lots of materrial to reading about my topic, I was thinking about how to write the right structure with Harvard cite. Like when I find some article about special aethetics in 3D animation, then found an article about ‘Aesthetics and Design in Three Dimensional Animation Process’ , there mention a element aim to do somthing，There is some example by Gokce Kececi Sekeroglu ( 2012, pp. 812-817)：
“Storyboarding process reflects 3D animator’s perspective and the elements that are aimed to be conveyed to the audience. The animation artists give life to a scenario, and add a touch of their personality to the characters and environment.”
That mean like , every element inside the animation or character design have some extent purpose. Like characters and environment elements may affect the audience’s understand with the story meaning.
After reading and finding some research, I start thing about my topic and the range of my literture reviw and FMP essay, that I need to select the article or book to find the key words.
This week we start making the connected facial expression into a fluence animation，For me it still have lots of details to fix. And I shooting my own facail change for the reference.
I think the facial change between each post must be meaningful, otherwise it seems quite strange and not connected head move and lack of timing adjust. I find some problems by myself:
Such as eyes close not matching the emotion change, first the mouth change, than the head change? all change should not at the same time, it is the same principle as the heavy object.
MORE FIXHOMEWORK SHOWS
Feedback :
1.Body move a bit to match the emotion look more natural .
2. +6 frams in the middle see how the difference happens.
3. The lower eyelid can move upper.
And this is my Heavy object:After feec back, I found some details to fix:
some middle frams is overroate must adjust by ” Euler filter”
the last action must be looks like it has finished and is flueing and not suddenly stop.
hand animation shouldn’t avoid.
After fixing the animate, it looks like better than last week especially more close to natrual behavier.
I was leaning the 3D facial expression in my 3D techniques class, we leand how to animation the facial expression, which is including aniamte eyes, mouth, nose, and head angle, then I realised that I am not good at it and I don’t even have enough knowledges with facial expression. So, I try to decide to write this animation performance with faical poses.
I want to focuses on facial performance in 3D animation. It studies how facial features communicate subtext in character performance. Mentioning the subtext is the hidden emotion of a character. It is not directly spoken. It is shown through small visual details. In animation, facial performance plays a key role in this process. Maybe I can stick on specific parts of the face. These include the eyes, eyelids, gaze direction, and blinking. It also looks at the eyebrows and mouth. These elements work together to show emotion.
Among these features, the eyes are especially important. Small changes in eye movement can strongly affect how the audience reads emotion. This suggests that facial animation is not only technical, but also a designed performance system, and analyse how these facial elements are used in 3D animation. It will focus on how subtext is communicated through controlled facial performance.
When I was doing the literature review, I wrote some knowledge about the topic: In the book ‘Animation Character Design‘ by Tom Bancroft, Chapter 2 talks about how the face works : for men, women, and everyone else. It explains how to push a character’s facial expressions and why it’s important to understand the face parts for both humans and animals.
For example, a male human character and an animal character like a dog can share similar features. That’s what anthropomorphic characters are.
Eyes – When an actor is in a close-up shot, the first thing we look at is their eyes. Then we look at the mouth for emotional clues.
Eyebrows – If eyes are the windows, eyebrows are the curtains.
Mouth – It also helps define the expression you want to show.
Neck – The tilt of the head can say a lot.
Some animals use their ears to show feelings. Ears up means happy or curious. Ears down means sad or thoughtful.
The eye is surrounded by skin and muscles, so those muscles can give each character a unique eye shape. A lot of the time, we only see less than one-third of the eyeball’s surface. There’s more going on behind it. When the pupil moves along the round eyeball, its shape helps show where the character is looking, then there’s the “zombie eye” which is a blank, lifeless look. Characters rarely use that expression.
In this week, I realise my neglect of homework , when I refinished my last homework, I totally forgot to check last week’s feedback from ting, and I just finised by my feeling, so the consequence is my homework in before this weeks feedback is full of problem from last time and this time. Now Ting remind me that I still didn’t fix the problem and floting things and I keep fix them in this week one by one.
This week when I fix my homeworks, I feel like a little bit frustrated and excitement. One thing is that, I feel like there are still some problems in Maya when I get the feedback, I can’t fix easily and know the right control spline. But I still fix them and try my best.
(Like when I feel like this get up part, which is not fluency, and very quickly than I expect. I select the whole body and move all key a little bit over a few frames so that, I can adjust this part with enought timing.)
There are some point need to be fixed:
Before 30 frames, the body need some small movements, or it will looks like strange and frozen ( head is the same)
165 frame the feet are floating
212-236 jumping turn should keep a curve which cannot at the same place( like the reference)
After land and hit, which is inportant to adjust the timing and the hand position to show the hit power
feedback and ani problemsHomework
After feedback I feel like animation is quite specific and very detail if you want to push and polish a good animation!
some random problem like over rotate.Here is my fixing process
But I am so enjoy the fixing process and do my job in Maya, that feel like taking care the every frames and making process and make the animate better. Also, I thing this is the time to see more animation, and when I see other professional animation, I need to think about how well they do the job with body movement.
For the facial animate
This week we leaning the facial animate tips and theoretical knowledge every eye blink have their own meaning and Do not blink for the sake of blinking, why blink:
Major attitude changes
Changes of eyes direction
Change of thoughts
Head movements
Staring
and the limited timing between two eye blinks contain lots of detail
Eye dart: the principle should menmory and recite is that:
Shows character is thinking/ gathering information
Keep character alive
Eyes aim always “lock” on something ( in steps)
Moves in straight line
The “eye dart triangle”
Eye lids, even shape, move accordingly to the eye movements
(energy level should stay the same)
Eyebrows movemen should be like: (there is a tip, when the eyemove but not eyebrows it will shows like distracting)
How to make a good emotional change in animation? the answer for timing is :
Thoughts →Eyes movements →Body
Those are what I leand from the class and need to keep practice them. Don’t give up
In this week, we start thing about the potential topic with our assignment. Then I wrote the Arcane Style essay (3D+2D) last term, and this arts performance style I really like, expecially character and the world view design (background, Character skills, Character performence and after effect), So here is my choice:
I want to explore character performance in 3D animation.
and knowing what kind of 3D characters can become popular( for example Jinx in Arcane). I also want to understand how characters express well in emotions. They use body language, gestures, and facial expressions.
Today there are new technologies for character performance. Motion capture can help characters show human emotions more naturally. Facial capture can create detailed facial expressions. Unreal Engine 5 also has a tool called MetaHuman. It helps artists create realistic digital characters.
These technologies are widely used in modern 3D games and animation cinematics. I want to learn these skills and understand how they work, because it can help me understand the workflow of popular 3D games, especially in character production.
